Ancient Exhumations +2

by Sargent, Stanley C

  I soon realized I hadn’t been far off comparin’ the nest to a mud dauber’s. You see, daubers look just like regular wasps, but they sting bugs instead of people, even when they’re pissed off. The sting knocks the bugs senseless so the daubers can stuff ‘em in the cells of their nest with new-laid eggs. The par’lyzed bugs get eaten by the newborn daubers, and I had an idea that was to be the fate of the chickens and Old Champ alike. It gave me a nightmare vision to think of such vicious critters scatterin’ all over creation!

  I looked real hard for a place where the nest builder might be hidin’, and before too long I located two big holes in the hay, one on either side, about ten feet from the nest. The bails’d been broke apart around each hole, then patted down to hide the openings. I’ve seen toads doin’ that very thing in order to have two or three escape routes from their burrows. I piled a couple hay bails over each of those holes to block them up, then crawled back out to the main floor of the loft. Then I plugged the hole I’d come out of and climbed back downstairs again.

  Sure enough, the bails on the main floor had been stacked up from floor to ceiling in order to hide a tunnel of mud stretchin’ down the wall from above. I guessed the critter’s lair must be secreted in the hay ‘neath the nest somewheres.

  After scoutin’ around outside a bit, I found where a hole come out under the barn. With the inside escape routes blocked up, the only way out had to be down the side of the barn and out that hole.

  I figured I’d scare the bastard out by tossin’ rocks up against the barn wall. I might have come up with a better plan in time, but the sun was settin’ and pretty soon I’d have only the light of my lantern betwixt me and that hole. I threw a bunch of rocks and waited with fork in hand to see what commenced.

  When I heard the baby cryin’ like the dickens, I breathed easier, knowin’ the little feller or gal hadn’t been stung as yet. Some loud thumps followed, along with a sound like somethin’ scurryin’ full chisel down the inner wall of the barn. The baby’s squalls changed to more of a whimpering, and it struck me all of a sudden that there could be more than one of them monsters lurkin’ in there. But it was a bit late for worrying about that.

  After a time, somethin’ poked its head up the hole and crawled out real slow, clutchin’ a blanketed bundle to its breast. When it sniffed at the lantern, I got my first good look at it.

  It appeared to be a great bloated toad, but the size of a grown man and nowhere near so big as the Simmons boy reported. Its kisser was plug ugly and put me in mind of a bat. The skin was all warty like a toad, and I was surprised to see the bumps made some kind of weird design on its back. For a bonus, it had a light coat of curly, white-blond fur streamin’ from its head down over the design. Rearin’ up on all-fours, it stumbled towards me on its hind legs like a drunken sailor! Its waddle blowed up ever’ now and then like a bullfrog’s, but I couldn’t make out if it made any sound ‘cos the baby seemed to gurgle and coo whenever the wattle deflated.

  My skin was crawlin’, but none of the rest of me could’ve moved. When the toad was about seven, eight feet from me, I raised my fork up ready to strike, but Toadaggwa, or whatever it was, was too fast for me.

  A pitch black snake of a tongue shot out its mouth and, before I knew it, the fork was snatched from my grip and I was knocked face down in the dirt. The toad slammed down on top of me. I rolled over quick to grab it by the neck, but the loose leathery waddle under its chin wouldn’t allow for no real choke hold. We wrestled and thrashed back and forth for quite a spell, with me staring into its half-closed scarlet eyes most of the time.

  I must’ve been bleedin’ like a stuck pig from gettin’ bit all over a whole raft of times — it had a mean set of teeth for a toad! It held me down fast with its stubby foretoes, and I felt its ice cold breath on my face when it finally stung me with the tip of its tongue. I was later told it had a sack of poison growing on each side of it where shoulders should have been. When the feeling started drainin’ from my body, I was convinced I was a goner for sure.

  Then the whole world exploded in deafening thunder! I thought I’d come to Final Judgment! But the thing I’d been strugglin’ with fell off me and somehow I overcome the poison in me enough to run at top speed to grab the baby. Ever’ part of me was screaming from pain, but I snatched the bundle up and kept going as best I could go in my feeble condition.

  I ran like a madman ‘til the world turned black and caved in on me. Despite it all, though, I somehow made sure my little charge was safe. When the Sheriff caught up with me, he said I was singin’ a lullaby to what I cradled in my arms. As it turned out, what I’d read as thunder was actually the blast of the Sheriff’s shotgun as he blowed that monster back to Hell!

  For a time after, I wasn’t right in the head at all, and I’m willin’ to admit to it. I was half dead from shock and toad poison, yet they still had to knock me out before they could take the baby away from me.

  I spent close to six months in the hospital, then I was brought here. I owe my life to the Sheriff, I don’t deny, but he’s long dead now and, damn his soul, it’s his lying that’s kept me locked up here ever since.

  Even the Sheriff had trouble acceptin’ the contents of Doc’s note, least ways at first. He’d just got back to town and read the note when he heard I was on my way out to see about Pritchy. In the note, Doc declared Toadaggwa was the real sire of Pritchy’s child, Mazrah havin’ planned it that way without her knowing. It was the awfulness of the coupling, Doc claimed, that blanked out her mind.

  The note contended Pritchy’d been beyond help when Doc left as the half-human baby’d not been born so much as it’d eaten its way out of her. Doc didn’t have it in him to kill the child even then, so he charged the Sheriff to do it for him. Doc wrote that it was more than he was capable of handlin’, so he decided to end it all.

  Hopin’ to head off any panic among the locals, the official tale the Sheriff gave out afterward was that Pritchy had caught some terrible, fatal disease from Mazrah, and Doc had kept it secret from ever’body including Oly, even after Mazrah died of it. Pritchy died from the disease after a stillbirth, then when the Doc realized he was infected too, he shot himself. It was a hundred percent bullshit, but it was easier to swallow than the truth, so folks accepted it without question.

  The only other person who knew the truth was the Sheriff’s deputy ‘cos he helped burn the house, the barn, and all their contents “to prevent the spread of infection.” You can’t tell me the neighbors didn’t suspect somethin’ more though, since a week later they hammered the Circle’s stones to powder and dammed the river up so it didn’t loop around no more.

  I never did figure what possessed the Sheriff to get me labelled insane so’s I’d be kept in this nut house for the rest of my life. Nor can I see these head shrinkers believin’ monsters could beget offspring with a human woman. Even if such were possible, how could they give credence to any tale of a baby that growed to six feet in under a week? It don’t make no sense unless they’re the ones who’s crazy!

  I sure as hell ain’t idiot enough to get myself all but ruined for no doll, but that’s what the Sheriff claimed I did! Hell, that thing butchered my looks so bad my face is only fit to scare snakes now! Would I allow that to happen over a doll? A man’d have to be insane to do such a thing!

  I can see from your face there’s need for that proof I promised, solid proof that can’t be ignored. I got it, or rather her, right here. Now, can you look at this pretty little baby here and still tell me Pritchy birthed some half-breed monster. I’ve been takin’ care of her since that very day, and there ain’t nobody can convince me she ain’t a real live, flesh and blood baby!

  Ain’t she just an angel all dressed up in her pretty little princess outfit? And she’s never once been a bit of bother or noise in all these years. Bless her tiny soul, little Marcella here’s been the best sister a boy like me could ever hope for!

  –Dedicated to the memory of Robert Bloch

  When th
e Stars

  Are Ripe

  “And the angels, all pallid and wan,

  Uprising, unveiling, affirm

  That the play is the tragedy ‘Man,’

  And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  “Ernest, you are the only person with whom I can discuss my special research,” my host, Porter Worthy, declared unexpectedly. “Should I venture to tell anyone else what I’ve been delving into lately, I’d be dismissed as a fool or a madman, and God forbid the Board should hear rumors of my ‘unconventional’ theories.”

  I sat in a comfortable overstuffed chair in the home of a man who had been my best friend since our freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. Our friendship had endured despite differing lifestyles and fields of interests. Porter’s fascination with paleontology eventually led to his becoming a full-time instructor of same at Arkham State University, whereas I taught cultural anthropology at larger Miskatonic University in the same town. The bond that kept us together all those years was a mutual interest in esoteric, even Fortean theories considered preposterous by the mainstream scientific community.

  The source of our steadfast trust in each other was twofold. According to Porter, I had saved his life one night when the two of us were set upon by five hooligans. We were both somewhat inebriated at the time, but my training in the art of self-defense turned the tide for us, enabling me to disarm two of the knife-bearing attackers before scaring off the lot. Porter never forgot the debt he felt he owed me for that night.

  Two years later, he proved his worth to me after inadvertently catching me in a rather compromising position — in bed with another male student. After a dumbfounded moment, Porter had simply said, “Sorry for the intrusion, Ernest; I’ll see you in class tomorrow,” as he scurried from the room. He spared me the scandal and embarrassment that surely would have resulted had he told anyone about the incident, thereby leaving me indebted to his discretion.

  So I listened, nearly 14 years later, as Porter related the details of his latest brainstorm, never imagining that I would soon share my friend’s enthusiasm for ideas the mainstream scientific community would consider implausible at best.

  Porter went on to tell me his interest had recently been aroused by the discoveries of a cave geologist, Dr. John Holbrook of Southeast Missouri State University. Holbrook’s team had drilled some sixty feet into the earth to explore hitherto inaccessible passages of Mammoth Cave’s 350-mile complex. There they found what resembled the gnarled roots of ancient stone trees. Holbrook recognized the massive branchlike tangles as the petrified burrow tunnels of some unknown organism that had thrived in the area during the Paleozoic Era, some 350 million years ago. The organisms had dug through the muddy subterranean soil which over time had changed into limestone hundreds of feet thick; the burrows themselves had filled with a much harder mineral called chert. When an underground river cut through the district, carbonic acid in the water easily dissolved the limestone, scooping out miles of interlocking subterranean chambers. The chert, however, resistant to the weathering effects of the carbonic acid, remained intact, exposed as weirdly twisted, tendril-like constructs jutting up from the cave floor.

  Samples of the burrow contents were sliced in cross-section, sanded down and mounted on glass slides for further investigation. Microscopic study revealed the crystallized remnants of feces and seed pods used to shore up the sides of the burrows, but no remains of the burrowers themselves were found. Holbrook tentatively ascribed the burrows to prehistoric worms or shallow-ocean shrimp, despite the fact that no such creatures were known to exist until some 100 million years later.

  Excited by the prospect of being the first to identify these curious antediluvian organisms, Porter subsequently scanned an endless number of scientific journals worldwide, both old and new, in search of similar finds. His investigations turned up a fair number of instances describing what appeared to be comparable artifacts, although all were subsequently misidentified as odd geologic formations rather than the byproducts of living organisms and, therefore, were dismissed as mere curiosities. These examples were, without exception, encountered deep underground in natural caverns and in limestone chambers attached to cenotes, the huge sink holes created when a subterranean water flow eats away enough subsurface limestone to cause the land above to collapse. The fossil burrows ranged in size from roughly a few inches in diameter, like those identified in Mammoth Cave, to specimens documented in Yucatan that exceeded a meter in diameter. Judging from the depths at which the burrows were reported, it appeared the unidentified organism, assuming all or most of the burrows could be credited to a single species, had increased in size with the passage of time, the Yucatan examples being the largest as well as the most recent, dated at less than 30,000 years old.

  “The burrowers seem to have grown as they neared the surface, and it seems likely they survived into the era of man,” Porter hypothesized. “Which leads me to speculate that they encountered ancient humans at some point.” Proof of this, he felt sure, could be found in the myths and legends of early cultures. Yet, on his own, he had failed to uncover mention of anything that would even remotely corroborate his theory. There were, of course, hundreds of tales of giant serpents and worms spread throughout the legendry of innumerable cultures, such as the marine serpents sent by Neptune to destroy the Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons, Apollo’s battle with Python at Delphi, Fafnir of Scandinavia, the West African Voodoo god Da (Danbhalah-Wedo in the New World), Thor’s stalemate with Midgard, and even the giant eel of the Polynesian Maui, but none of these were said to live beneath the earth in colonies, as the evidence indicates the burrowers did. Only the Nagas of Indonesia were said to have congregated in large numbers, but they were depicted as surface dwellers for the most part and thereby did not fit the essential criteria.

  In frustration, Porter turned to me for aid; he sought my expertise and knew I, due to my specialized field of research, was one of the very few who had access to Miskatonic University’s library of rare and forbidden ancient texts.

  “Of course I will help you, Porter,” I responded. “I’d have suggested it myself if you hadn’t beat me to it. Out of curiosity, I’ve read a bit of some of the better-known volumes they have locked away at the library, the notorious Necronomicon, the Cultes des Goules, the Borellus’ texts, and even the infamous Biblia Sinistre. I’ve not pursued their contents in depth, but I’ll see what I can come up with at the very first opportunity,” I assured him.

  I promised to let him know the moment I came across anything that sounded promising. As it turned out, nearly four months slipped by before I found enough free time to look into the matter, but once I did, I became totally engrossed in the project. Five weeks later, I contacted Porter, telling him I had come across something that might very well apply to his situation. We agreed to meet that same evening.

  It was not until after dinner that we retired to his library for our discussion. “Have you stumbled come across the name Shub-Niggurath or Niggrath in your studies?” I asked as my opener.

  “No, I haven’t,” Porter responded without hesitation.

  I would have been surprised if he had.

  “Well, Shub-Niggurath has become the focus of my research,” I told him. “It seems this Shub-Niggurath, or simply Niggrath as the term is modified in the Biblia Sinistre, is said to be some sort of alien entity pervasive throughout the universe. ‘It,’ or more frequently ‘she,’ is also known as ‘The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young,’ obviously a reference to fertility.

  “One source describes Shub, as I like to abbreviate the name, as a mass of black goat hooves and tendrils spilling forth from a noxious cloud, while an equally reliable source depicts it as a black tree-like entity with animated branches and roots.”

  I paused to study the face of my one-man audience as he sipped his wine distractedly, his curiosity not as yet aroused.

  “Despite the aforementioned characterization
s,” I continued, “Shub is classed as a subterranean burrower, dwelling deep within the interior of the Earth, which accounts for it rarely being encountered by human observers.”

  Porter finally discarded his nonchalant aire. He leaned forward on the edge of his chair and whispered ‘Shub-Niggurath’ to himself repeatedly before encouraging me to go on with my story.

  “Now, I hope you will bear in mind that a key element in folklore of this kind is often gross exaggeration of the truth, for the details relating to Shub become rather fantastic at times,” I added.

  Impatiently, Porter waved me on.

  “The fragment of the Book of Azathoth I consulted claims Shub’s home lies beneath the surface of a distant star called Yaddith, but the Biblia Sinistre, the contents of which were culled from a number of ancient tomes no longer in existence, tells a rather different story. I might add that the library holds Joseph Curwen’s handwritten copy of that rarest of volumes, the only copy containing his copious marginal notations.” It was obvious the name meant nothing to my friend, so I proceeded to share the little information I had about the man.

  “Joseph Curwen, a notorious American alchemist of the late 17th century, strove to interpret the ancient lore at his disposal in a scientific light, being himself a well-read and educated man for his time. From what initially appears to be little more than a confusion of excepts, he came up with the hypothesis that the term Shub-Niggurath is in fact the collective label for a species of alien organisms rather than simply the name of a godlike supernatural entity. After all, the Hebrew ‘-ath’ suffix is plural.”